UK Politics: Royal Weddings and Referendums

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, Spockydog said:

In order for this to happen, the right wing press will need to dial down the Islamophobia. Which wouldn't be a bad thing at all, though I can't really see it happening.

The right wing press won't be concerned about a Conservative Muslim.

[Maltaran]

18 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The right wing press won't be concerned about a Conservative Muslim.

A lot of their readers will be

[lessthanluke]

1 hour ago, Maltaran said:

A lot of their readers will be

This.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

16 hours ago, Werthead said:

I suspect Javid's positioning himself for a campaign a good time after Brexit, though. Boris is a busted flush. I am surprised by the degree to which Gove has made a comeback though. Quite remarkable, given his untrustworthiness over stabbing Boris in the back.

That might have to do with Bozo himself. He has done such bad job as foreign minister, that the word incompetence cannot even remotely begin to describe it. So Gove backstabbing and thus preventing him from being PM now looks like a real good deed in hindsight. I think the perception of sheer incompetence is also what effectively killed off Davis hopes of becoming PM in the near future. I mean you look at all his swagger and braggery before the referendum and negotiations, and then you look at the (predictable) outcome thus far of the negotiations, and I don't think there's any Tory that goes like: Yeah, this is going well, my old boy David is doing a fantastic job there. For the true believers in Brexit he must be a real disappointment. In a way May's plan to put the two of them in charge of cleaning up their own mess has worked. So Gove by virtue of not working on the Brexit frontline has started to recover somewhat.

Maybe our resident Tories can tell me whether this looks like an accurate describtion.

If any blasphemeres here question JRM's ability to run the UK, may this prove you wrong.  Fun with flags or JRM using big words void of meaning to explain why the border issues are not really a problem. Problem some lorry driver with first hand experience is showing a disturbing lack of faith in the Smug.

[mormont]

19 hours ago, williamjm said:

This is the same electorate that once decided Iain Duncan Smith was the perfect choice to lead their party, so I wouldn't put it past them.

Yea, but Rees-Mogg makes Iain Duncan Smith look like Alec Douglas-Home. 

Although he does have two surnames which is clearly an advantage in the Tory party.

[Werthead]

12 hours ago, Yukle said:

As an outsider looking in, why did the Labour party stick with someone who nobody seems to like? He has his supporters, but Corbyn gives the impression that nobody wants to work with him or for him.

That's a strange impression to have. He won two leadership ballots and brought the Labour Party from being completely unelectable according to the polling to within a reasonable grasp of winning. It was one of the largest swings from pre-election polling to actual result ever seen in British politics.

A lot of people in Corbyn's own party and particularly the Parliamentary Labour Party aren't keen, but a lot of them came in (either as MPs or lower down) under New Labour, when Tony Blair decided to take the party from the left to the centre, in the process (if you're particularly unkind) of becoming the Diet Tories. Corbyn has taken the party back leftwards again, opening up clearer policy gaps to the Tories and - somewhat successfully - fighting against them on the grounds of inequality, the miseries brought about by austerity and the failures to get to grips with tax avoidance by large companies, not to mention the ever-popular battlefields of education and schools, and has even been able to make inroads in traditionally Conservative-strong policy areas like defence and policing because the Tories have dangerously throttled the life out of those services as well (to the point where the current Tory ministers in those areas seem to have realised the danger of Labour outflanking them in those areas and tried to get the government to hold back on further cuts).

Some of the Corbyn gloss has worn off a little because of his party's somewhat flexible/opportunistic (delete as appropriate) attitude towards Brexit, but that's been overshadowed by the Conservative Party's utterly disastrous infighting over Brexit and inability to handle the situation, which has seen it bounce between a hard Brexit and a soft one like a demented basket ball in the shake of Boris's head. From that perspective, Corbyn's strategic vagueness on Brexit hasn't been the worst approach in the world.

[Hereward]

2 hours ago, mormont said:

Although he does have two surnames which is clearly an advantage in the Tory party.

Citation please. There are actually more people with double barrelled names on the Labour benches, and the only cabinet or shadow cabinet member with one is Labour. 

[Werthead]

55 minutes ago, Hereward said:

Citation please. There are actually more people with double barrelled names on the Labour benches, and the only cabinet or shadow cabinet member with one is Labour. 

Correct, but the Conservatives have elected three (or four, Arthur Balfour seems to be called Arthur James Balfour a lot but not exclusively) leaders with either double-barrelled names or just known by three names since the start of the 20th Century (Andrew Bonar Law, Alec Douglas-Home and Ian Duncan Smith), as compared to zero for the Labour Party (Antony Shitweasel Blair being apparently unofficial), which statistically suggests a three-named Conservative is more likely to make it to top office than a three-named Labour MP.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

That's a strange impression to have. He won two leadership ballots and brought the Labour Party from being completely unelectable according to the polling to within a reasonable grasp of winning. It was one of the largest swings from pre-election polling to actual result ever seen in British politics.

How much of that was down to Corbyn, and how much credit has to go to the Tories is somewhat open for interpretation. My take is, it was an anybody but the Tories/May thing, so Labour benefitted from the UK effectively being a two party system, so they took in votes from LibDems. In Scotland Labour and Tories both benefitted from a form of electoral fatigue and not wanting to give the SNP a mandate for IndyRefII at that moment (at least that's what I think happened there).

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Some of the Corbyn gloss has worn off a little because of his party's somewhat flexible/opportunistic (delete as appropriate) attitude towards Brexit, but that's been overshadowed by the Conservative Party's utterly disastrous infighting over Brexit and inability to handle the situation, which has seen it bounce between a hard Brexit and a soft one like a demented basket ball in the shake of Boris's head. From that perspective, Corbyn's strategic vagueness on Brexit hasn't been the worst approach in the world.

That's imo a too generous interpretation of what's going on with Labour. They are as weak and ridiculous when it comes to Brexit as the Tories, they just have the luxury that their nonsense is from the opposition benches, and has thus not to be translated into actual policy. I mean Keir Starmer's test for a Brexit deal includes that it delivers the exact same benefits as EU membership. Now let's imagine PM Corbyn was to deliver Brexit and chief negotiator Starmer was tasked with delivering such a deal.

[Maltaran]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Correct, but the Conservatives have elected three (or four, Arthur Balfour seems to be called Arthur James Balfour a lot but not exclusively) leaders with either double-barrelled names or just known by three names since the start of the 20th Century (Andrew Bonar Law, Alec Douglas-Home and Ian Duncan Smith), as compared to zero for the Labour Party (Antony Shitweasel Blair being apparently unofficial), which statistically suggests a three-named Conservative is more likely to make it to top office than a three-named Labour MP.

The Labour equivalent seems to be havig the first name of James but using your middle name, see Ramsey Macdonald, Harold Wilson, and Gordon Brown

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Notone said:

That's imo a too generous interpretation of what's going on with Labour. They are as weak and ridiculous when it comes to Brexit as the Tories, they just have the luxury that their nonsense is from the opposition benches, and has thus not to be translated into actual policy. I mean Keir Starmer's test for a Brexit deal includes that it delivers the exact same benefits as EU membership. Now let's imagine PM Corbyn was to deliver Brexit and chief negotiator Starmer was tasked with delivering such a deal.

Yes, I can imagine that quite easily, if only on the grounds that the current shower of notables tasked with delivering Brexit would struggle with delivering a pint of milk. Not to say that I think Labour would deliver us to the Brexit land of milk and honey (no-one can do that, least of all Davis, Fox and Boris), but certainly they would do a better job on the metric it is not physically possible to do a worse job, except possibly by getting in Rees-Mogg and having the hardest of hard Brexits.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

25 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Yes, I can imagine that quite easily, if only on the grounds that the current shower of notables tasked with delivering Brexit would struggle with delivering a pint of milk. Not to say that I think Labour would deliver us to the Brexit land of milk and honey (no-one can do that, least of all Davis, Fox and Boris), but certainly they would do a better job on the metric it is not physically possible to do a worse job, except possibly by getting in Rees-Mogg and having the hardest of hard Brexits. 

True-ish, however if Labour went for a soft Brexit, then they'd have Kate Hoey instead of JRM rambling on about the great betrayal, how the Good Friday Agreement has become obsolete, and MacDonnel reassuring that everything's gonna be a walk in the park (instead of likesay Davis).

I mean Labour's ambiguity is just a nicer way of saying, they don't have a coherent position or a plan, either. Just when I think about Labour's a customs union, not to be mistaken with the custom union stand up - that's still their official position, though isn't it? Labour and Corbyn are most certainly preferable to May and the Toriy lunatics, but to pretend they have a coherent position or a logical plan, that is based based on reality when it comes to Brexit, well that is a bit disingenious in my opinion.

To some degree that Labour infighting about a customs union is what the Tories are doing with their max facs vs. customs partnership are doing. None of those "solutions" are going to fly, and neither will pass Starmer's same benefits test.

[mormont]

 

15 hours ago, Hereward said:

Citation please. There are actually more people with double barrelled names on the Labour benches, and the only cabinet or shadow cabinet member with one is Labour. 

Just a little joke based on the three names that happened to be in the post.

[Derfel Cadarn]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44230865

food rotting in britain's fields due to large fruitpicker shortage - thanks Brexit!

i'm sure native brits will be fighting over these jobs...

[Werthead]

6 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44230865

food rotting in britain's fields due to large fruitpicker shortage - thanks Brexit!

i'm sure native brits will be fighting over these jobs...

The TV report was quite interesting. The Romanians are choosing to go to Spain, France or Germany instead to work as they no longer see the UK as accepting, and since the pound dipped on the exchange rate, it no longer makes as much economic sense to come here.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Meanwhile, what I said about Labour divisions on Brexit not differing that much from the Tories, just that Labour has the benefit of not being charge.

Starmer himself says, Labour is too divided to pick up the House of Lord amendments.

 

[Werthead]

Paul Dacre is leaving the Daily Mail, which will upset no-one. It probably won't affect editorial policy much - Dacre is going to still be upstairs - but here's hoping that the replacement is at least slightly less demented.

Bit bizarre how every news report is mentioning his decision to name the (probable) Stephen Lawrence killers, which is true was a laudable and possibly even brave move. However, it doesn't entirely blot out the decades of shit-stirring, demonisation of the poor and immigrants, fanning the flames of Islamaphobia and of course the paper's fine medical coverage in which they cumulatively claimed that every substance on Earth either gives you or cures cancer.

1 hour ago, Notone said:

Meanwhile, what I said about Labour divisions on Brexit not differing that much from the Tories, just that Labour has the benefit of not being charge.

Starmer himself says, Labour is too divided to pick up the House of Lord amendments.

If there was ever a time to be making hay whilst the sun shines for Labour, it was now, but it turns out nope.

[Yukle]

11 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44230865

food rotting in britain's fields due to large fruitpicker shortage - thanks Brexit!

i'm sure native brits will be fighting over these jobs...

It's interesting to note that all data I've seen suggests that farmers were more likely to support Brexit than the populace at large. For whatever reason, they voted against their own interests.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/farmers-brexit-regret-bregret-funding-common-agricultural-policy-a7163996.html

[A Horse Named Stranger]

21 hours ago, Yukle said:

It's interesting to note that all data I've seen suggests that farmers were more likely to support Brexit than the populace at large. For whatever reason, they voted against their own interests.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/farmers-brexit-regret-bregret-funding-common-agricultural-policy-a7163996.html

Not that surprising, it's illogical, but not surprising.

EU farming policies are often criticized as one size fits all, not being felxible with regards to local farmers needs etc. Sometimes also farmers feel kinda annoyed over EU quotas and regulations in general. So the other side (free access for your goods to the single market, farm subsidies, easy access to farmhands across borders), they are obviously regarded as a given. So the farmers were pretty quick to ask that UK goverment fill in for the loss of EU subsidies, because otherwise quite a lot of farmers are in trouble. You want to see have our cake and eat it logic at work, just look at your average EU farmer (I have relatives who run a farm, so this also a bit anecdotal on my part).

[Yukle]

6 hours ago, Notone said:

So the farmers were pretty quick to ask that UK goverment fill in for the loss of EU subsidies, because otherwise quite a lot of farmers are in trouble. You want to see have our cake and eat it logic at work, just look at your average EU farmer (I have relatives who run a farm, so this also a bit anecdotal on my part).

That makes sense. If I have this right: the EU subsidies were to encourage the sale of goods from EU to other EU nations. Is their any certainty that the EU will import UK food at a higher cost?

Similarly, I am fairly sure the UK would import more food than they produce, anyway, so perhaps it's possible that food costs will rise if the EU isn't subsidising exports to the UK.